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Over at Fruits and Votes, MSS addresses my post on Hong Kong’s new method of filling vacant seats through OLPR. He adds:

A potential benefit of the proposal, however, is that it should reduce the incentive of parties to rotate some of their legislators between elections. Doing so is common in OLPR systems–elsewhere (I do not know about Hong Kong)–and undermines the connection of elected legislators to the electorate. Under the Hong Kong proposal, a party would often forfeit the seat if it sought to swap out a member.

I was unaware of this phenomenon, but that makes sense. I think this point really illustrates how unique this method is. I typically associate PR parliamentary systems as being ones where the party owns the seat, not the individual. As seat allocation is first determined by a party’s share of the vote, this is still somewhat true. The new rule, however, would give an individual MP far greater ownership over their seat. MSS continues:

As for the Carey-Shugart (1995, Electoral Studies) we only claim that low-M OLPR places less premium on cultivating a personal reputation than does higher-M OLPR. The story is seen from the competing candidates’ point of view. From the voters’ point of view, however, smaller magnitudes and shorter lists undoubtedly increase the visibility of those who are elected, who win with greater shares of their party’s votes. I actually think this method for filling vacancies makes more sense for smaller district magnitudes than it would for larger. Whether it makes more sense than the usual party-centric way is an open question, and one that might not have a clear answer.

The Hong Kong government recently announced a proposal to change the way they fill vacant seats in the Legislative Council. Hong Kong elects its MPs through open list proportional representation; the current method of filling a vacant seat is through a special election. While this seems somewhat intuitive, a special election is actually inconsistent with the values of a PR system. Awarding seats proportionally only really works if you have multiple seats up for grabs at once; otherwise, it just becomes a standard SMD race where the two largest parties will dominate. Most countries fill empty seats by picking the next in line candidate on the previous office holder’s party list. The new Hong Kong proposal, however, is to replace the vacant seat with the first unelected candidate on the party list that had highest number of remainder votes in the previous election. What does this mean? Proportional representation systems rely on quotas to evenly allocate seats to each party. This works by using as system where each seat in a legislature corresponds to a raw number of votes, equal to a quota. A party’s total seat total then, depends on the number of quotas it wins in an election. Although there are various ways to allocate seats (largest remainder or highest average method) no PR system can perfectly award seats in one-to-one relation to vote shares as leftover votes are bound to exist. Giving the seat to the first candidate on the list with the largest remainder then, is essentially giving it to the first candidate who did not win a seat in the last election.

A Government spokesman said, “A vacancy arising mid-term in the geographical constituencies (GCs) or the newly established District Council (second) functional constituency (DC (second) FC) seats will be filled by reference to the election result of the preceding general election. The first candidate who has not yet been elected in the list with the largest number of remainder votes in the preceding general election will be returned. These constituencies adopt the proportional representation list voting system. The proposed replacement mechanism is consistent with the proportional representation electoral system and reflects the overall will of the electors expressed through the general election.”

This is interesting because it assumes that individual candidates are driving vote choice more than party label. There are five constituencies in Hong Kong for thirty seats, so the average district magnitude any party list competes on is around five or six. I’m guessing this small district magnitude is what’s leading them to conclude that personalities matter. Hong Kong uses the Hare quota to allocate seats, the simplest method of seat allocation and one that generally favors smaller parties. As Hong Kong seems to return several small parties to parliament with one seat each, maybe they assume that the individual candidate who captured that seat was a big reason for the party’s success. To me this is contrary to what the literature would suggest. According to Carey and Shugart, low district magnitude in open list PR decreases the incentive for a candidate to cultivate a personal vote. In contrast, it is in high magnitude, open list PR where candidate preference matters more. This is because in a larger list, candidates have a stronger incentive to distinguish themselves from their fellow list members. Ultimately, we don’t really know why any individual is voting the way they are, but I think the Hong Kong government’s assumption requires more explanation.

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I am an elections and civil society specialist based in Washington, D.C. Prior to living in Washington, I worked as a media consultant in Cairo, Egypt, and a Democratic campaign consultant in Raleigh, North Carolina. All views expressed are my own.